


Various short HP things

by helwolves



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bringing Back Black, Dragons, Gen, Gratuitous UK Spelling, M/M, Marauders era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-07-19
Updated: 2005-08-01
Packaged: 2018-01-04 17:03:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1083482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helwolves/pseuds/helwolves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Didn't feel these warranted their own separate posts but I wanted to repost everything here, so...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. glow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So my first HP fic was inexplicably a gen fic about Charlie Weasley and his dragons... (July 19, 2004)

Charlie Weasley doesn’t get many moments to himself. He’s used to it, mostly, having grown up in a home with an ever-increasing number of orange-haired imps. But sometimes, yeah, sometimes these solitary times under pearl-grey skies are like.. like... hell, he’s not sure what, but damn is the silence nice.

Ten miles in the air a glittering black serpent whirls and dips. Charlie looks up, momentarily mesmerized by its liquid movements. He sits down right in the gravelly trail, his long legs sprawling, and leans back on his elbows, stretching the aching muscles of his arms and back. He lets the heavy black fire-retardant robe slip from his shoulders. It catches on a fresh bandage on his right arm (slight slipup yesterday, no worries) and he squirms until the robe falls, then lies back and lets the blazing sun warm his skin through the crisp Carpathian air.

The silence is almost deafening and he wonders why no one has come calling yet, why none of the big scalies have begun causing a ruckus. The black has begun soaring in wide, lazy circles overhead and Charlie lets his eyelids grow heavy, the smell of wood smoke settling over his senses like thick perfume. Black scales above catch the sun, and Charlie knows that up close and personal those scales aren’t really black at all, they just fracture and reflect the light in a thousand colors at once (a magic more rare than even animagi, something natural, something wild).

With bitten-down fingernails Charlie scratches at a scarred old burn on his abdomen, through thick cotton at first, then tugging at the hem of his undershirt to let his fingertips wander over the rough, pale patch of skin that runs like a cartographer’s dream from his ribs to beneath his belt and beyond.

Fucking hell, that was quite a day. He remembers almost everything about his first week on the job: the snow that blew in every direction at once, the blacks circling far overhead, the huge shadows on the white mountain slopes. The icicles at the cave entrance like a frozen, jagged-toothed maw. The running water, the red flashes, the darkness, the sulphur, the searing, the blacking out. Waking up in the hospital tent hours after, sore and burning, wrapped in bandages and a potion that smelled of pine needles. Sending that first owl to his mum. Dreading her reply, reckoning it would beg him to come home, worrying that he just might take her up on that.

Going back in the next week. The eyes of that old scaly glittering in the darkness of the cave. So weak and aged that just three stunners took him down. Iggy, that’s what they called him, while buckling the leather harnesses and working the protection charms. Charlie plucked a tarnished old sickle from the dragon’s hoard that day. He still wears it, knotted up in a black leather thong around his neck. That and the scar, which he figures is just as good a souvenir as any other.

Charlie grins to himself, the sunlit glow behind his eyelids flickering with the swooping shadow above. When he opens his eyes again he sees that the serpent has drifted downward, now gliding over the scattered treetops that circle the rocky clearing. It’s one of the younger males, lazily staking out territory that isn’t his. Charlie doesn’t look forward to cleaning up after the fireworks that will come when the alpha finds this pup floating where he doesn’t belong. But for now, well, it’s pretty damn beautiful.


	2. like some sweet gravity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:** Angst, run-on sentences, bringing back Black. (April 25, 2005)

Sirius awakens to the sound of a boy sobbing.

It’s the sort of sound that would have had him doubled over with laughter many years ago, something so rare and so raw that it felt like a great accomplishment, bringing a boy to tears rather than raised fists. But now Sirius finds himself aching inside, wanting nothing more than to raise himself up from this sprawl on the grit-covered floor, to crawl over there and wrap his arms around the boy, to make whatever has brought that wracking grief to someone so young go away forever and ever... 

Only, his limbs will not cooperate. And the bolt of white fire that shrieks through his skull sends him back to the floor in a crumple of pain. And Sirius is suddenly awash in grey, in the memory of the other place, of tattered fabric and falling, of frozen hollows, of the ghost of wind, and he knows that he should not be here.

He should not be here.

“Sirius...” 

The boy’s voice is soft, shaking, and _Harry_ , yes, James’s Harry, and he’s not sobbing anymore but making wet noises in his throat, and shuffling closer. Sirius feels a damp, hot palm touch his cheek, and it takes all the strength in his body to nudge his face into the gentle touch. Harry sucks in a breath, sharply, and collapses against Sirius. Skinny, polyester-clad boy limbs press against him at all angles and it’s as if the frost is draining from his body at every point of contact. 

Sirius shudders as the ache begins to fade from his bones, as Harry sobs into the crook of his shoulder, as his fingers become useful again and he reaches up to twist them in the soft black hair at the nape of the boy’s neck. 

His eyes open fully and even the darkness hurts. The floor, the dark paneled wood, the furniture swathed in white. Frames hang on the wall, endless rows of wood and bone and other things, once filled with scowling faces and austere smiles, now empty, pits of black and jewel-toned velvet... Motionless and hollow.

“Harry...” he rasps, his voice returning in a sudden surge of warm breath in his lungs. “Harry, what have you done...”


	3. untitled (dogdaysofsummer)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lazy sandy drabble for [dogdaysofsummer](http://dogdaysofsummer.livejournal.com/) way back when. (August 01, 2005)

The lightning flash will make Remus think of thunderstorms — of heavy drops falling on Brighton and the sand going wet and solid beneath his feet. Summer is thunder and the weight in the air that burns away in wisps of steam only Remus can see as Sirius moves. They will never close the windows; there’s nothing that will mind being dampened. Sirius keeps matches in his shoe.

 _No more July,_ Sirius will say, as if this has significance. Remus has stopped counting days.

This will be the first August that means nothing other than the landlord will want his cheque. Remus will get a letter from his mum with £20 in. Sirius will already have posted the rent; will demand that all Remus’s spending money go towards choc ice and firewhiskey — and perhaps a comic book if his silly Moony insists on having something with _words._

Remus will put up as much argument as is proper, but the taste of sweets and liquor on Sirius’s tongue will soon make him forget the pretence of responsibility in favour of shared last licks, and sticky fingers, and the sparkling on his skin as Sirius’s sand-roughened fingertips trace runes through the fallen rain.


End file.
